The Wedding World Wave

WOO HOO! I'm engaged! Sure, it's been three weeks since this happened, so I'm a little behind. But it's been so crazy, and at first it was really hard to wrap my head around. After waiting and dreaming of that moment for years and years, it happens pretty quickly. Haha. For weeks and weeks I'd been thinking that maybe, just maybe this time…and it wouldn't happen. Then, maybe this time…and it wouldn't happen. I'd gotten in the habit of thinking "maybe this time…" but solidly knowing it wasn't going to happen yet. So when he bent dow beneath a canopy covered in lights to tie his shoe, I again thought "maybe this time…" yeah, and while he's down there he just pulls out a ring…and he did! I was completely caught off guard then. I had to ask him if he was serious. Yes, he was. And, of course, yes, I accepted.

I didn't sleep much that night, trying to decide if it was really real. But the next day at school, when I told all my sixth graders, being surrounded by their excitement, I started to bubble over too. Unfortunately, I had to give it up that night after school for it to be sized. Bummer. But a couple days later, I waited on the guys from the jewelry store and they remembered me and told me my ring was finished and I could come pick it up! I was there first thing the next morning. For the next several days, I could not stop looking at my finger, and was more and more convinced this whole thing was reality when the ring continued to be there.

Apparently though, six to seven months is not much time for planning. When Mom and I went to David's Bridal, the first gal we came across looked at us with wide, incredulous eyes when we told her we were just looking and getting some ideas. Everyone seemed to lighten up when we informed them I'd only been engaged for less than two days at the time of our arrival in their store.

They did get us to try a few, and I ended up picking the second one I tried on. Well that was easy. Mom seemed kind of disappointed we'd found it that quickly. But I have to say, it's nice having that done already. I'm a very indecisive person, and I actually made a decision without hesitation that I don't regret at all. That in itself is worth recording.

Finding a reception hall, on the other hand, has been quite an adventure. Everywhere books a year in advance and all Kal's friends are graduating and getting hitched this summer and were already engaged with dates set long before us, so we were kind of stuck in a corner about choosing a date and a reception hall, since they kind of go hand in hand. But last week, I made an executive decision that I was getting married on July 5th, and the reception hall should be nailed down before the end of the week. Save the Date cards are on the way! We were able to buy them for 10 cents a piece, and they're postcards! So cheaper postage! YAY! Now I just need to get all the addresses for the people on the guest list. Such a long list….all the more for a very big party! :)

I have a lot of emails to send tomorrow and I have to look into one more reception location. Hopefully, the final pieces of that will come together faster than they have been so that we can just call it done and move on to the next thing. I'm ready to move on to the next thing. I'm tired of dealing with this thing. I'm kind of scared of losing my position in any place and end up with nothing while we're waiting for responses from one place. Seems ridiculous to me. Phones work even if the weather's bad people! You can access your schedule from home! I believe in you! Slowly….slowly….I just wish it wasn't soooo slowly….six and a half months just isn't that long….

But the next stage is drawing closer :) I'm so looking forward to filling in the blanks once the big pieces are down on the table. We're going to have so much fun :)

But for now, school has been cancelled for a few days because of the snow and cold, and I should really start taking better advantage of it. So far, I'll only go to school on Friday. Wonderful. Going back on a Friday. Welcome back to Social Studies, kids! We will be completely unproductive. Not because I want it to be that way, but rather because it's inevitable, so I will need to put my brain to work tomorrow. Lots to do! I better get to sleep so I can focus correctly….

Translator Please!!

I have a confession. When I was in high school, I was a huge Jonas Brothers fanatic. Like, huge. MySpace was in at the time and I dedicated hours and hours of life every day to creating a webpage in MySpace dedicated completely to the Jonas Brothers. I connected with other fans, I wrote these stories called fanfics, fictional stories, by fans, about their idols. It was ridiculous! Looking back on it, I can't help but feel slightly embarrassed that this was how I spent my life for a year and a half.

On the flip side of that, my unhealthy obsession had it's good points. I learned html. I wasn't a pro, but I was pretty good! I understood what all the basic coding was and how to make links and text boxes for various things of various sizes and place graphics in specific places and link pages and hide pages and have all the posts have their own link so it all linked together! I don't know the specifics of it all, but I knew how to manipulate it. I learned the basics of photo editors, and picked up new information from other fans. My brain absorbed it all.

Unfortunately, for the last five and a half years, I've had no use for it. We've gotten a new computer at home, so I'm sure all my notes and files are long gone. They probably were not deemed worth saving. Now, however, I see the benefits of creating a similar project in Blogger for my classroom. To be able to make announcements and post downloadable pages for homework assignments in case someone lost theirs or something would be magnificent. Plus, it would get me some brownie points for using technology for my classroom. Being at school every other day makes it difficult to keep in step. Taking my classroom to the Word Wide Web seems like a logical solution. Most of my kids have iPhones and what not anyway. They can access the information whenever they'd like. All students have gmail accounts. I could find a way to use that little website for further digital connection. Safely, of course. It would take some research. But I have no doubt that it can be done. Somehow. The problem is that all the knowledge I'd acquired back in high school has taken a bolt for the door as my attention and brain power have been directed towards other things. I don't have a lot of spare time on my hands either. When I try to do some research on the basics of how to work things in Blogger (because, naturally, it's slightly different from a general html page), some of it still makes sense. Like opening and closing commands and so on and so forth, but my brain has so long been used in other capacities, I can feel the struggle to decode the Greek before my eyes.

Oh the frustration! I finally have good use for the knowledge and skill I'd refined on pointless activities and now it's gone! Will it be easier to learn now that I've done it once? Yes. But that doesn't make me feel too much better. I still feel like I'm starting over. I hate that feeling of defeat. I need to find a class or something. Someone to explain it to me and organize the learning process. It's a shame I don't have those notes anymore, at least to get me started again. I guess the only way to do it is to do it. Start a new blog and play around with it until I get the feel for how it works. That's what I did in MySpace. I had no idea what I was doing. None at all. But as I gained popularity through my writings in the Jonas world, I needed a cooler website. So piece by piece, I Googled and asked other MySpacers to make what I made of it. It's a fine project to be sure. It's just useless.

I'm determined to figure it out though. Before next school year starts, I want to have all my stuff together to introduce it. It's just gonna take a lot of work. So what I need is a scrapbook blog. Where it's okay to screw everything up for the sake of learning. Hey, if you've never failed, you've never tried anything new.

…right?

So I Need to Get This Off My Chest for a Minute…

I love being a teacher. Have I mentioned that yet? I love being given the opportunity to help develop students' minds and broaden their thinking. I have so much fun creating lessons and materials. I've spent  a lot of time re-creating how things are done in 6th grade Social Studies. I've hardly touched the textbook. I use it as the basic skeleton of my overall goal and fill in the pieces with my own research. I add muscle and color and life. To what they dedicate a small handful of pages, a section in a chapter, I give weeks to. How else are students going to have the time to think about the people and events and form their own opinions on issues? I hated the textbook from the beginning. So I tossed it. Four months later, I still don't regret it. It was the best decision for my teaching development.

That being said, I've cut out a lot of work for myself. It's easy to have students read the book and answer some questions on a page I copied from the resource paperback I got with the teacher's edition. It's hard to collect a variety of sources to use in creating your own pages to make your own textbook of sorts that's specifically planned out to stretch student's minds a little bit more each class period to allow them to better see the bigger picture of the world. It takes time and planning and a lot of effort to help students, especially in sixth grade, to draw conclusions and make connections across subject areas and topics. But it must be done. There's no other option. Textbooks, though a wonderful resource for general direction, serve little purpose to me beyond just that. There's so much more to be discovered, and I'd rather spend my time doing activities, group discussions, video responses, teaching how to question and become aware of thinking and the importance of being able to communicate thoughts throughout writing, etc., than flipping through glossy pages with glossy eyes, on the assumption that learning is taking place.

Learning should be exciting and engaging. Students should love coming to class, in anticipation of the new things they'll get to explore. Sadly, this attitude toward education is not encouraged in society, by parents, or, sadly, some teachers. Education is not seen as a luxury and a privilege, rather as a tedious requirement and dull chore. Where I get excited to do and learn something new, many others cringe because it's one more thing on the to do list.

I feel like I have a lot of good ideas that could bring some life to the stale air that is the environment I work in, but I don't feel like anyone really wants to listen to me. They express how they love what I'm doing and that I have a new way to teach in my room, but don't want to try it in theirs. When I try to give ideas, there's always an excuse. There's always a reason why it's too much for them, there has to be an easier way. Well, sometimes the best things don't come easily. Often, really, they take time and effort. As the world around us changes, the way we teach the population of that changing world needs to change too. That seems to make perfect sense to me. Instead, I receive the message of "this is how things have always been done"….it saddens my heart.

All the other teachers are having major behavior problems with a couple of students. They all kind of look to me out of the corner of their eyes as they all complain in team meetings, and I just sit and listen. I don't have any of those problems. Maybe I'm doing something right. But they wouldn't listen to my thoughts anyway. So I don't share them. When I walk into my room, it's my sanctuary. My escape. In that room, I can make the world come alive through my approach to Social Studies. I can gently prod students forward in our quest for deeper knowledge of the world in which we live and the past that molded it. They can waste my prep time with their complaints in team meetings three times a week, but they can never take my teaching.

I was born to do this, so do this I will.

I was never a vocal leader. In college, the volleyball coach tried to turn me into one, but I don't overflow with the right words or phrases. Instead, I just do what I know I need to do. I put 120% into completing the task before me. Rome wasn't built in a day. Troy didn't fall in a day. Veteran teachers don't change their philosophy in a day. I know what I'm doing is working. It's evident by the work I see turned in to me. I actually take the time to read and respond to everything my students write. All 76 of them. Through their written work they'll sometimes ask me a question and I'll take the time to write out a full response. No matter how many questions I get. Isn't that a better use of my time than yelling at kids for forgetting their pencil every day, or griping to another teacher about how Johnny is driving me up a wall?

I have my complaints, don't get me wrong. When a kid stabbed another student with scissors and threw a tantrum when he got in trouble, I was slightly annoyed. But losing pencils? Forgetting homework or books in lockers? That just doesn't seem worth it to me. Sure, my supplies are low and I have little to no classroom money. But I can buy a couple packs of pencils fairly inexpensively to help kids out instead of laying them out flat with my words when they left theirs in Art on the other side of the building.

So I will continue to trudge forward through the thick, wild jungle around me. The literacy coach can't wrap her head around how I've done what I've done or how I'm still going. I just do what I know to do. I learn from my mistakes. I learn from my students. And I keep pressing forward towards what I want, towards what I know to be true. I'm not perfect. If fact, there's many times I feel like a terrible teacher. I stumble and fall a lot. And it usually hurts really bad. I'm a first year teacher. A first year teacher who, because I'm only there every other day, does't get a whole lot of outside support. A teacher who has to work another job to stay afloat. Who falls behind. Who says the wrong thing. Who's organization shatters. I probably make more mistakes that I do progress sometimes. But I get up, brush myself off, and take another step. Grandma says I'm the "perserverer"of the family. I don't always feel like it. And sometimes, I owe it to my competitive nature more than my desire to get up again. Oh, you don't think I can teach, redesign curriculum and instruction, read all my kids' work, grade, plan, organize, turn the classroom inside out, and work 30 hours a week at Ruby Tuesday? Watch me. And they do. With wide eyes.

I have been given a purpose. That purpose is my passion. And that passion is my fuel to drive my forward.

Watch me.

A Short One

Well, I've remedied the template problem for the most part. I scrapped the old new one and found a new new one that doesn't look so out of whack. Does the title blend in and basically serve no purpose whatsoever? Yeah, sure, but life goes on.

I got a new toy on Black Friday. I broke down and bought a MacBook Air. My Dell was taking 20 minutes to start up, and seriously lagging with any task. I couldn't take it anywhere either. It has been a life saver. I can work on all my stuff for school, create all my pages, and take the whole thing with me wherever I need it to go. On the days I work doubles at Ruby Tuesday...no problem! I can pack this slim thing up and hit the road, and as soon as I open it up, it's ready to go. It's seriously like a miracle for me. As an added bonus, the battery runs forever. Well, to me, she who couldn't even jostle her computer or it would shut off, it lasts forever. I'm so pumped. Now I just need to pay it off...

My observation results were good! I scored much higher in some areas than I think I expected to, and I got some pointers on how I can reach for the next level as a teacher. According to the principal, I'm right where I need to be. I'm still doing a lot of crazy things trying to find the right pieces that work for me, my teaching style, and my students. I had one of the sixth grade teachers walk into my room today and gush about how cute everything was and then turn to leave saying "I need to go, this room makes me feel inadequate." Interesting. What would it take to get them to try some new things too? That's part of the reason I'm there right?

Some pieces of teaching are already a drag. Like grading. I hate grading. It just takes forever and I'd rather spend my time furthering my knowledge on a topic and planning lessons. But I know in order to make good lessons, I need to know where my students are in the process so I can teach to them instead of just over their heads. I've been getting pretty lazy with it though. I've been putting it off way too much. I have two rounds of current events to grade now, and I spent the weekend grading all of their pages they've done for their file books on Greece. I have some catching up to do, and prep to do for Thursday...golly, that's tomorrow now I guess isn't it...lots on my plate, as usual. If I could just get these current events out of the way, I might stand a better chance of accomplishing all I need to accomplish. I'm strongly considering canceling the next current event due date (the day right before Christmas Break) as a Christmas present both to the students and to me. I don't want to track down that many more late assignments either. No kid is going to want to do a current event for that day, and not a single one will remember to make it up when break is over if they need to. We'll see. I need to get some lesson plans on Rome laid out to make sure the kid leaving for vacation the week before break will have as much of the stuff as he needs before he leaves as possible...yeah, like that's gonna be easy.

Well, it's freezing in my room, and I work all day tomorrow...today...at Ruby Tuesday. So I'm gonna knock off and see what all I can get prepared to accomplish. I still believe...

Pre-Observation Jitters and Assignment Avoidance

Dear Mom (since you're the only one who reads this blog),

I hope you like the half changes I made to my blog! I uploaded this super cool template I found online, but then when I try to change the font and the size of the title and all that, nothing happens. So now I just have a giant pile of crap sitting at the top of the page. Oh, I told Google alright. You'd think in their giant empire, there has to be someone who can remedy my problem.

I'm trying not to think about it. I would much rather pretend that it's exactly how I'd like it to look instead of continuing to feel my blood boil at the terrible appearance of something I'm trying to fix up and take pride in. I'm a perfectionist and slightly OCD. And I know this simple, stupid problem is going to drive me up a wall and through the ceiling.

Back in high school, I didn't mind messing with html code as much. With my JoBro obsessions, I memorized all the necessary combinations to make awesome MySpace pages and graphics and so on and do forth. However, it has all reverted back to a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that's "all Greek to me!" I figured that figure of speech was appropriate given my current topic of study with my students. If I could only find the spot in the Blog Title section that had the font...or maybe figure out how to make my own graphic and insert it instead. I would take that too. But I don't have time to re-learn right now. I have to get myself ready for tomorrow, which I am finding myself very unmotivated to do.

I have my first observation tomorrow. I'm kind of freaking out. I feel like I have a good lesson planned, but I can never be sure. She also wants me to type up my lesson plan for her...I DON'T WRITE LESSON PLANS!! All I do is sketch out a general skeleton and "play ball!" I like to go with the feel of the room. I may plan some questions in advance because of my end goal for the day, but other than that....so I have some work to do tonight. But I'm going over to Lauren's tonight with Laura (yeah, you read that right) at 7:30, and Kal plays basketball at 9 (if I can make it over there in time).

I have made several changes to my classroom, though, but I still have so much I would like to do. I just don't feel like doing it at the end of the day when I'm exhausted. Ya know? I feel a little better about what my principal will see when she comes to observe me. I have the standards we've covered written in "I Can" statements, posted on my makeshift bulletin board, I have my Wonder Wall up and running. However, tomorrow will be the first day for the Wonder Wall. I'll pull a couple of questions down from the board and we'll work on answering them together. I'm a little worried about how it'll go since I haven't done it before, and the first time I do it will be in front of the principal during an official observation. Perfect. And it's current event day, so she'll have to bear witness to the embarrassingly terrible turn-in rate for homework assignments. Even better. I just hope the kiddos cooperate and do what I ask of them. If only for tomorrow. I do not want to lose this job.

Well, wish me luck! I have a little under half an hour before I want to head over to Lauren's. I should get that lesson plan down...

No Escribo Mucho, Lo Siento.

Well, it's official. I suck at keeping a blog, just like I suck at keeping a journal. Oh well.

I'm almost three months into my first year of "for real" teaching" now. There have been so many great things I wish I would have made note and taken better record of. I made my first impression by stringing up a grid, hovering over students' heads, to teach longitude and latitude. Then we dove in to this awesome unit about Ancient American Civilizations. Having been to the Mayan ruins in Copan, Honduras, I was able to accumulate many pictures and take them on a "tour" of the city, explaining the bulk of Mayan religion to them. We made these awesome interactive notebooks and we had so much fun putting them together! I had a girl tell me yesterday that she loved gluing all the pieces in, but not writing the final letter. Well, too bad. Learning still needs to happen!

So now, they're all working on writing me a letter as if they are from on of the three civilizations, telling me what it's like to be a citizen (or slave, or king/emperor....it's very open really) and comparing and contrasting their civilization to one of the other ones. I have a few of them that have turned in their final letters to me and I'm so excited to get to read them! Some of these kids are so creative. I had to keep reminding them to make sure the stories and descriptions in their letter were based on factual information, that it could have really happened. Historical fiction people!....Hmmmmm, I could really dive into that genre in Social Studies. Why am I just now thinking of this?

I have a to-do list for the basic structure of....my classroom/teaching/learning/walls.

1. Put up a "Wonder Wall".  I want kids to be able to post things they have questions or wonder about while they read and study in and out of the classroom. I'm going to turn one of the panels of the dividing wall into a space for posting these thoughts. We'll randomly pick some from the wall and answer them together! Questioning is an important reading skill.
2. Create a time line. One of the standards that needs to be met in sixth grade is the comprehension of time lines, understanding AD and BC. I want to have a "crooked" timeline, wrapped around the top of the room like a border, that we add to when we learn about something new. I want to reinforce the idea that all of history coincides and overlaps.
3. Writing checklist. I'm not sure exactly how this will look yet, but I want to have a visual reminder of my expectations for student writing. With this, I want to teach the Smart Answer format of written response, which students need to follow when writing on ISTEP.
4. Giant World Atlas. This one, I know how I want it to look, I just can't be sure I can make it work. I would love to have the continents all cut out as large black masses posted somewhere in the room, and we add colored labels to them as we learn about new geographic locations. We've covered the continents, the five oceans, and the cardinal directions. We'll be talking about the Mediterranean and Black Sea when we start the Greeks, and I want to be able to add that stuff in as we talk about it. 

This really makes we wish I would have had the time to do all this stuff before the beginning of the year. I hate that my students this year can't get the best of my ideas from the start. But, better late than never I suppose. I have a lot of work to do. But for now, I need to be at Ruby Tuesday to work a double serving in exactly one hour. And this woman still needs to shower. I'll create later :)

I'M A REAL TEACHER NOW!

When I say that, I feel like Pinocchio, "I'm a real boy!" But whatever. It's true! I'm a real teacher now! And I've been hard at work trying to create my classroom into what I want and need it to be! It's been such a crazy week. I have so much lesson planning to do and there's no curriculum map, so I feel like I'm basically pulling it all from scratch. I don't have the resources I'm used to, so I'm going to have to get creative. But that's something I can do. The thing is, none of this even really feels like work. It's just doing what I love to do! So maybe it takes a little longer to do things because I'm a cutesy-type teacher inside. Hey, I'm elementary certified! Pardon me if I don't want it to look like a guy did everything. I like fun fonts and creating notes to go with cool, attractive PowerPoints and lessons. To me, this is my playground.

Things that like to trash my playground are things like spending an hour at the Central Office when I could be playing in my playground and having to fill out an inch and a half thick stack of paperwork when I was super tired. Poor woman was probably excited to finally see me go. I couldn't remember anything, or sign my name quickly by any means. Everything was such a chore with the fatigue. I realized when I got home that night I'd written the wrong number down to contact Dad in case of an emergency. Super. I have some more things to send through the corporation mail on Monday so I can finish everything off, so I'll just send a Post-It with it I guess. And follow up on it later. I mean, my phone has a few contacts listed as ICE. So really, it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

Besides the lesson planning, one of the very first things I need to do is establish rules for my classroom that are easy to understand, enforce, and remind students of. So I spent some quality time with my computer and made these lovely things!

I spent a lot of time on them getting them to be like I want them, and making sure the owl went with the polka dot background :) You know you wouldn't expect anything less from me. But I mean, if I'm gonna have a permanent teaching job, and have to look at them for more than a few months, I want them to look pretty. So I'll have to get them all printed off on cardstock and laminated! Yay! That'll be a project for probably Wednesday night after school. I have to work at Ruby's Monday, and I don't teach on Tuesday.

So great. It's kind of sad how excited I get about these sorts of things.

I have a long list of things to accomplish, like labeling my files. Heck, creating the files I need....okay, finding what files I will need to begin with. See how desperately stuck to square one I am? I need to find out about the McRel evaluations and get a hold of a rubric for me to start studying. All my evidence of what I'm doing will need to be filed throughout the year as well.

In more exciting news, I bought a beach ball on Amazon. But not just any beach ball. This is a beach ball that is a globe. Complete with longitude and latitude. Guess who got excited about her lesson planning activities? That's right. This girl.

I'll have to try to keep up with blogging so I can inform and record exactly what's going on. I missed all of the chaos of the job hunt this summer. Really, getting this job was not expected. I know I'd blogged something about it, mentioning I thought I'd be great for the position, but how I got it was totally off the wall. I'm kind of bummed I didn't blog all of that. I guess I feel like no one reads this thing anyway, so why bother? I'm not much of a "celebrity" at all. No one really follows me and my life. Oh well.

Well, I believe that's all for now! I've been working like a busy busy bee, trying to get everything sorted. Hopefully as things fall into place, I'll be able to talk more about school and my classes and all that fun junk. And eventually, when I get everything set up how I want it, I'll take some pictures of my room to share! Yay!

Until next time! Whenever that may be...


Thanks to these guys for the graphics. Just FYI.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Hazel-Owl

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